The Midden

Chapter 21

'Of course I don't know where he is,' Victor Gould said irritably. He disliked being phoned late at night and he particularly disliked being phoned late at night by Bletchley Bright with questions about his wretched son, Timothy. As a result, and because he had something of a bad conscience, he was less than forthcoming. 'It's true that he did come here some time ago...'

'What the devil did he do that for?' demanded Bletchley with his usual tact.

'Perhaps he wanted somewhere to stay,' said Victor, just managing to keep his temper. 'Why don't you ask him yourself?'

'Ask him? How the hell can I? I'm trying to find out where he has got to. The damned boy has disappeared.'

'I'm sorry to hear that,' said Victor. 'I can assure you that I haven't got him.'

'Didn't suppose for a moment you had,' said Bletchley. 'Can't see why he should come to you in any case. Still, if he does, be so good as to let us know.'

'Of course,' said Victor and put the phone down with a new and furious resolve not to have anything whatsoever to do with the damned Bright family in future. They were all impossibly rude and arrogant and Bletchley, who was usually one of the more polite ones, was showing his true Bright colours. Victor Gould turned out the light and lay in the darkness wondering what had happened to the ghastly Timothy. Perhaps he had been killed on that motorbike and his body hadn't been found. Victor didn't like the possibility but it had to be faced. Above all, he didn't like the thought of all that money sitting under the stairs. And finally and most decisively, there was Henry's future to be taken into account. No matter what had happened on that fateful night, Victor Gould was determined to keep his nephew's involvement out of it. After all, Timothy Bright had invited himself down to Pud End and had helped himself to had stolen in fact the tobacco with the Toad in it. Whatever had happened to him was of his own doing and no one else was to blame. Having come to this conclusion Victor Gould turned on his side and went to sleep.

Within the Bright family assembled at Drumstruthie there was no such peace to be had. The realization that his son was a thief came particularly hard to Bletchley Bright but while he was anxious to do something he was certainly not prepared to repay Aunt Boskie her one hundred and fifty-eight thousand pounds out of his own pocket.

'With interest of course,' Fergus told him.

Bletchley looked at the old man as if he had said something obscene. 'With interest be damned,' he retorted. 'Even if Boskie is correct, and I am by no means convinced that the full facts have been placed before us '

'Balls,' Fergus interrupted. 'Don't talk like a Prime Minister at Question Time. No fudge, sir. Your son has stolen Boskie's savings and there's no getting away from it. If you want to keep him out of the courts, you will see that Boskie is fully repaid and with interest at a bank deposit rate. What's more, if those shares have moved up since that damned boy sold them, you'll make good that loss too.'

Bletchley looked desperately round at the other family members who had gathered at Drumstruthie, and found not a single sympathetic eye.

'It will almost certainly mean selling Voleney,' he said. 'And you know what that means. The old house has been in the family since 1720 and '

'And it will remain in the family, Bletchley,' rumbled Judge Benderby Bright, who was still furious at having to fly back at such short notice from his holiday on his yacht in Llafranc. 'If you are forced to meet your boy's debts by selling the house, you will offer Voleney to the family to buy at a properly adjusted price. Should you try to do otherwise, the Serious Fraud Squad will immediately be informed of your son's crimes. I hope I have made myself clear.'

There could be no doubting it. Even Boskie's empty chair was implacably censorious.

'If you say so,' said Bletchley. 'I suppose it will have to be like that.'

'It doesn't have to be, provided you find your boy and get Boskie's money from him,' said Fergus.

'But how am I going to do that without bringing terrible publicity down on us all?' Bletchley complained. 'I'm sure you wouldn't want that.'

No one said anything but all the eyes round the table watched him carefully. Bletchley sensed this shift of initiative in his favour. 'All right then, I'll take out advertisements in all the newspapers and put his photo in. That will surely bring results.'

It was a vain attempt. Still no one stirred, but their eyes indicated the veto. A true Bright would never have made such a terrible threat. Bletchley Bright came to the family heel.

'Oh, all right,' he said. 'All the same it's jolly hard to know how to go about finding Timothy if he doesn't want to be found. He's just vanished off the face of the earth.'

'Very wise of him,' muttered the Judge. 'In his shoes I'd stay there. Have you enquired of the French Foreign Legion?'

'Or the police,' said Vernon. 'You may have some luck with them. I always did think allowing him to have a motorbike was a most dangerous thing to do.'

'I never did encourage him,' Bletchley replied, 'besides he's twenty-eight. I'd hardly call him a boy.'

'Never mind what you'd call him. What I am trying to say is that he may well have come off the thing and even possibly...Do you happen to know if he's insured?'

'He's bound to be,' said Bletchley, taking hope from this prospect.

'I don't suppose he's sufficiently covered to repay Boskie,' said Fergus. 'And in any case it is too much to hope for.'

Bletchley Bright left the gathering a drained and drawn man. The realities he had spent a lifetime avoiding had finally caught up with him in the shape of a dissolute and criminal offspring.

When he arrived back at Voleney it was to be greeted by a distraught Ernestine. 'Oh God,' she said. 'It's too awful. Do you know that Boskie has escaped?'

'Escaped? What on earth are you talking about? She can't have. She's not being imprisoned anywhere.'

'That's what Fergus has just phoned to say,' his wife told him. 'He said I was to tell you that she has escaped from the clinic and gone to London to see the Home Secretary.'

'But she can't have. She's seriously ill and '

'Fergus said that if she dies, the family will hold you responsible for her death.'

Bletchley stared at his wife through bloodshot eyes. It had been a long drive from Drumstruthie and he had had time to try to think. 'Never mind the old bitch dying. Why has she gone to see the Home Secretary? What on earth for?'

'To tell him about Timothy, of course. Apparently she knows the Minister personally. Fergus seemed to think she had an affair with him...In fact he's certain she did.'

As she broke down and began to cry, Bletchley took the decanter in his hands and poured himself a stiff whisky. 'If you're seriously telling me that Aunt Boskie who is ninety had an affair with a man who at best reckoning can't be more than forty-three, you must be mad. She'd have been in her sixties when he hit puberty. It's a positively filthy thought. She'd be older than you are now, for Christ's sake. Don't be silly.'

The taunt was too much for his wife. 'I'm only telling you what Fergus said. And why is it so silly? You think it's silly for a woman my age to want to be made love to by a young healthy man with real feelings and the body to express them with? You're the one who's mad. Mad, mad, mad, mad.'

As she dashed from the room and her words reached him distantly from the corridor, Bletchley Bright looked sorrowfully round the great room and let his mind, such as it was, roam back through the centuries to the time the first Bright, old Bidecombe Bright who was known as 'Brandy', had stood there and had been proud of the achievements that had culminated in the building of Voleney House. And now, thanks to the criminal lunacy of his damned son, he, Bletchley Bright, directly descended from old Brandy, was going to have to sell the house he had been born and brought up and had led such a wonderfully idle life in. It was an unbearable prospect. He poured himself another Scotch and went into the gun room.